Let me back up. In case you missed the title of this post (or the giant JPG before the jump) for some reason, we're talking Eureka 7: Astral Ocean, the 2012 sequel series to one of my favorite anime (and shows, regardless of genre), Eureka 7. To catch up, E7 featured giant sentient robots, a blue-haired "alien" girl, lots of political and racial analysis, and one incredible soundtrack. It's a lot more than that, but I'm trying to not let my inner fanboy show. The main characters of the original series, Renton and the titular Eureka, they had a happy ending, in that they saved the world, acknowledged their love, and everything/everyone was able to co-exist peacefully.
Enter Ao, Renton and Eureka's son and star of the sequel series. From the first episode, viewers will see something jarring. If they've seen the original series, even the pilot of the sequel just rips everything E7 spend 50 episodes setting up. Yes, it's cool to see Ao and his Asuka and Rei rip-offs go all "Monster of the Week" and go all Gurren Lagann/Gunbuster/Getter Robo with the weaponry (there's a major weapon, the Quartz Gun, which has the power to rewrite history/rip holes in the space-time continuum/kill everything, rebirth it, and kill it again. Additionally, the Nirvash itself is a sentient robot that seems to get supercharged by Ao's fighing spirit). Yes, Truth, pun-ny name aside, is something of a complex villian. Yes, there is political stuff like the original series, even though it's nowhere as in-depth as the original's political epicness. And, yes, we even get to see (HUGE SPOILER ALERT. HIGHLIGHT TO SEE) Renton and Eureka pop up from a Mad Max-esque dystopia where most of humanity (including their daughter) was killed by the Scub Coral, the lifeforms which in the original series ended up getting along with humanity...yeah, this series is kind of a slap in the face at times!
However, even with all these possibly amazing plot points in place, the series falls flat for me. It's partly because the ending of E7, while flawed in its own right, was "perfect" for the confines of the show and what it was trying to do/speak on. To make a sequel series that pretty much takes all the peace and love and destroys it, possibly thrice over, is nothing short of anime blasphemy. It's akin to making Akira into a 4 Kids dub...oh wait, that kind of happened.
But, even outside of that, there are glaring problems. These include the series' length, the amount of stuff it shoves into that length, the lack of entire character development (instead opting for a couple broad strokes per character, including Ao), the lack of thought that went into many of the "monsters of the week," and dropped plot points--sometimes points that'd help explain the whole story of Eureka 7 so much better for a newcomer (or add depth for the vets). What E7:AO gets right, however, is the fact that there are some plot points that are expanded upon in the series that fill in details from and/or add annotations to the original series. These points, sadly, are few and far in between.
So, in closing, if you're looking for a proper E7 sequel that builds upon the series in big ways and doesn't rewrite the series with a Quartz Gun, stay away. If you're willing to accept that it's not the original, and is, at the very least, a beautifully animated (thank you BONES) psuedo-Evangelion clone (without the mindscrew, for better or worse) that happens to toss in Eureka 7 characters and terms for the sheer heck of it? Give it a shot.
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